Re: Fwd: Dylan stuff

Hmm, cool.

I agree that prefix Dylan might have made things easier. :-)

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 3:09 AM, Bruce Mitchener
<[email protected]>wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Below, I'm forwarding a couple of emails from Mikel Evins.  He and I have
> been communicating via email this month.
>
> Mikel used to work at Apple on Dylan about 2 decades ago.  He's been
> working recently on his own programming language, Bard:
>
>     https://github.com/mikelevins/bard
>
> He'd made a comment recently about wishing that Dylan still had a prefix /
> s-expression syntax and I invited him to try adding that himself (with our
> support).
>
> I recently pushed a branch with a couple of commits to add some support
> for a language header in files and to rename the current parser in some
> places:
>
>     https://github.com/waywardmonkeys/opendylan/tree/prefix-dylan
>
> I think he's got some great questions below and I'll respond shortly with
> my own comments, but hopefully other people that are interested can chime
> in.  I think it would be interesting to see this project make some progress.
>
> He's got a successful build / bootstrap of the compiler (for the first
> time in 19 years) ... so hopefully we can all make the best of this. :)
>
> Welcome aboard, Mikel!
>
>  - Bruce
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: mikel evins <[email protected]>
> Date: Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 2:30 PM
> Subject: Re: Dylan stuff
> To: Bruce Mitchener <[email protected]>
> Cc: mikel evins <[email protected]>
>
>
>
> On Jan 10, 2013, at 1:29 AM, Bruce Mitchener wrote:
>
> > I thought about dropping you a note this week, but figured I'd give you
> a bit more time. :)
> >
> > Looking forward to hearing more soon. :)
>
> My machine is in the midst of the 3-stage-bootstrap at the moment,
> currently building the coff-builder. If it finishes happily, then I'm good
> to go on the basic build.
>
> I've read through the grammar; I didn't immediately notice any great
> mysteries.
>
> The first question on my mind is: how do we decide exactly what the
> current grammar of an s-expression-based Dylan should be? I don't think I
> can just recapitulate the circa-1992 Dylan I used; for one thing, it lacked
> certain features the OpenDylan now has--for example, the s-expression Dylan
> had macros, but they were defmacro-style macros written in Common Lisp,
> using Leibniz, the modified MCL on which the Apple Dylan compier was
> implemented. For another thing, the language has obviously evolved further
> since then, and I have to assume that I'll find features in the current
> OpenDylan that were not in Apple Dylan, and that therefore had no
> corresponding syntax.
>
> So the question is, what should I use as a standard for the S-expression
> syntax? I'm guessing the process is something like: start by looking for a
> syntax in Andrew's 1992 reference manual that corresponds to the current
> infix syntax; if I find one, and it suitably matches the current semantics
> without problems, use that. If there are new features to take into account,
> or if there's a mismatch for some other reason, attempt to find a
> minimally-disruptive modification to the syntax that reconciles with the
> current language; if that fails, ask you and the other maintainers and
> users of the language what seems to you to be the right solution.
>
> If we're lucky, an obvious or at least uncontroversial s-expression
> version of the current syntax will be clear. Failing that, we can hope that
> a lot of the corner cases can be easily resolved by a little discussion.
>
> That leaves places where we'll have to do actual design work for the
> S-expression syntax. I don't mind doing that work, but I don't want to
> unilaterally impose any of my idiosyncracies on the language without
> running them by the current users.
>
> So if you or others have input about how to decide what the revived
> s-expression syntax looks like, either now or later, I'd be very interested
> to hear it.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: mikel evins <[email protected]>
> Date: Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 2:35 PM
> Subject: Re: Dylan stuff
> To: Bruce Mitchener <[email protected]>
> Cc: mikel evins <[email protected]>
>
>
>
> On Jan 11, 2013, at 1:30 AM, mikel evins wrote:
>
> > So if you or others have input about how to decide what the revived
> s-expression syntax looks like, either now or later, I'd be very interested
> to hear it.
>
> Oh, and lest I forget, another obvious question is: do I make a Lisp-style
> reader that supports reader macros, or do I implement the s-expression
> syntax using a grammar file like the one used for the infix syntax?
>
> My own preference would be to write a Lisp-style reader that uses
> readtables and reader macros. The Lisp reader is not something I would give
> up without some regret; it's just too darn handy.
>
> On the other hand, if the existing Dylan community is dead-set on having
> both syntaxes defined in the same way, I will comply.
>
>
>
>
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>

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